


chiaroscuro

by besselfcn



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Tattoo Artist Hanzo Shimada, domestic angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 06:18:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: It takes several months for Hanzo to allow Jesse to flip through the sketchbooks in his presence.





	chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Legacy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11089209) by [sciencefictioness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencefictioness/pseuds/sciencefictioness). 



> Sighs. SIGHS.
> 
> This is undeniably sciencefictioness's fault, from beginning to end. 
> 
> This work came out of conversations we had roughly surrounding their [Legacy](https://archiveofourown.org/series/799938) verse, which you should read if you enjoy McHanzo and/or polyshipping. This work borrows elements from that verse (namely: Hanzo as an artist & the names of the brothers' dragons), but It is not necessary to read that one to understand this one. It won't hurt you, though. **Minor Legacy spoilers** for Hanzo's dragons' names & some backstory hints.

It takes several months for Hanzo to allow Jesse to flip through the sketchbooks in his presence.

Jesse’s seen most of the drawings by now; reverently pored over pages and pages filled with ink and graphite, running his fingers along the edges of each sketch as he imagined Hanzo creating it. The way his eyebrows pinch in concentration. The slight scowl on his face as he draws the things that itch at his fingers.

He’d wanted Jesse to see them, he’d said, but Jesse couldn’t ask about them. That was the only rule.

(Jesse had wondered why, at first, when all the pages seemed to be filled with idle tattoo designs, or loving recreations of the people Hanzo saw: Jesse, Genji, store patrons, people on the street. But when he’d dug deeper, he’d understood. There was violence, and secrets, and _anger_ hidden in those pages. Fists with dripping blood. Mouths split open. A hand, reaching out.

Designs that looked innocuous--a painting, a training room, a sloping castle wall--but replayed in harsh lines over and over across the books, like they were burned into his mind.

And at strange and dramatic angles, like he was looking up at them from the ground.)

But he’s eased off of that blockade over time, allowing Jesse to tell him which designs he liked, which images he thought best captured the lines of Jesse’s face. He’s opened a sketchbook in front of Jesse and allowed him to watch as he outlined a memory of the beach in Okinawa, the sun spilling up over the horizon. He’s been letting Jesse in.

And now? Now they’re propped up against the headboard in bed, a glowing blue dragon’s head perched in each of their laps. Now Hanzo’s dropped a book into Jesse’s hands--a new one--and told him, _you can look now, if you like_ , voice wavering but encouraging.

Jesse’d had to take a second to exhale before he’d said, _of course, darlin’_ , and opened up the crisp white pages to soak in everything between them.

He’s got the book propped up on his knees so he can scratch idly between Ruri’s ears as he looks. She pretends not to pay attention to him, but in his periphery he can see her tail happily twitching.

(She’d warmed to him quickly; follows him around the apartment most of the time, now, makes herself small enough to curl around his shoulders as he cooks or reads or works. Sleeps curled on his side of the bed, when they’re let out at night. Hanzo jokes that if she could crawl back into Jesse in the morning instead, she’d do it.

Aoi is--not like that. Aoi hardly touches him. Stares, unblinking, from a distance. Even now, as her other half is curled around him, she rests her head in Hanzo’s lap and simply watches with her claws on display.

“She might never treat you as she does me, or Genji,” Hanzo had told him once, rueful. “Is that--”

“Of course it’s alright,” Jesse had told him, and he’d meant it, without reservation.

But sometimes he still kisses Hanzo just because he knows she’s watching.)

Jesse is ever-impressed by Hanzo’s linework. It’s assured but delicate; careful but raw. The lines jump from the page. He doesn’t know much about art, himself, but he always enjoys looking at it, and the visceral feelings it pulls from his chest.

He flips the page, and in an instant Ruri is snarling.

He withdraws his hand from her head; she’s bared her teeth, her eyes in slits, staring at the page in front of them with more venom than Jesse’s ever seen out of her. Hanzo snaps his head over and freezes; Aoi hasn’t moved, her body as taut and coiled as ever.

Jesse slowly places his fingers to partially obscure the drawing on the page.

It’s a dragon; one he’s seen drawings of before, but not one he recognizes by sight. It isn’t Midori, with her lithe body and open, playful face. It isn’t curious Ruri or stonefaced Aoi.

This dragon is massive, and powerful, and _angry._  Its teeth are always bared when he sees its drawings, dripping with blood or venom or both at once. Its eyes are deep-set pebbles, its claws bared, its body arched as if about to attack.

“Hanzo,” he says softly, because Hanzo’s still staring, at the page and at something far away.

He jolts. “Sorry,” he says, and his fingers press deep, deep into the muscles of Aoi’s neck.

“It’s alright,” Jesse says softly. He looks back at the page, at Ruri with a growl still rumbling low in her throat. “Is this--”

He stops. Looks to Hanzo to gauge the reaction. Hanzo’s looking down at Aoi, but his head is turned slightly towards Jesse. Listening, even if he can’t bring himself to face him.

“Is this your father’s dragon?” Jesse asks, as lightly as he can manage.

Hanzo turns his head back towards the page; he stares at it, _harsh_ , like he’s challenging it to stare right back.

“One of them,” he says, eventually. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. “The mean one.”

Jesse’s eyebrows shoot up. “There was a _nice_ one?” he asks, before he can stop himself, and he’s got an apology halfway out his throat until Hanzo starts laughing, thin but genuine.

“No,” he admits. “No, but this one…”

Hanzo reaches a hand out; Jesse nudges the book towards him. His fingers tap at the edge of the sketch, tracing over the jagged lines of the dragon’s face, down to its pulled-back lips.

Ruri nudges Hanzo’s hand, nose pressing into the palm. He lays a hand over her snout.

“The other one was brutal. Efficient. An obedient weapon, the way that they--the way that he _said_ they were supposed to be.” He swallows, his finger tapping the sketch again. “This one was cruel. Took pleasure in the cruelty.”

He withdraws his hands, then. Pulls his knees in a little too; curling up around Aoi, as she curls tighter around him. _Making himself small_ , Jesse thinks.

There is a silence then. A while ago Jesse might have tried to fill that space--with a platitude, a reassurance. But he’s learned to recognize when a retelling, or a memory, is not over but has come to a place that Hanzo has a hard time working through, like a knot in his hair. He lets him work over it.

“The way Ruri purrs sometimes, when you say you are proud of me,” Hanzo says finally--and yes, Jesse knows the sound, the sensation of it, a euphoric rumbling they can both feel down to their bones. “That is how that one sounded, when I would beg my father to stop.”

Jesse feels sick, deep in his stomach. He remembers suddenly all the sketches he’s seen of the dragon; the malice in its eyes, the anger in its pose. The blood dripping from its teeth.

“I’m sure as shit glad your father is gone,” Jesse says, despite how much he wishes he could get his hands on the man’s throat himself.

Hanzo looks at him, though, with a tired amusement in his eyes.

“He’ll never be gone,” he says. But there’s no grief in it. No fear. Just something like acceptance; an uneasy kind of peace. “Only further away.”

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, crook.... I know. 
> 
> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/besselfcn) far too often.


End file.
